SPE 584 - Special Populations in Gifted Education

Sunday, December 8, 2013

When I was the 7th and 8th grade teacher of the gifted education in Hattiesburg, Mississippi one of my students came out as being homosexual. What I witnessed this young man experience for the next two years saddened me. My hope is that during this semester, you have gained enough perspective as a culturally responsive teacher to support all the students in your classroom. In the space below, please feel free to share your thoughts.

Creating a culturally responsive classroom requires you to be sensitive to the needs of all the cultures represented in your classroom. At the same time, you need to design programming that requires students to explore their own cultures. In the space below, describe a menu of Type I, Type II, and Type III activities that will engage your students and enable you to transform your classroom into a culturally responsive learning environment.

This video is about a decade old, but the information shared impacts many of y'all's classrooms. Watch this video and then describe how immigration has impacted identification of gifted students and programming for your gifted program. (As of March 30, 2015 -I apologize, this video has been pulled from the Internet. Feel free to skip this blog.)

Too often we associate twice-exceptional learners with those who are gifted and have a learning disability. However, there are a number of gifted children who have physical or sensory disabilities. At the same time, there are a number of students with physical or sensory disabilities who are also gifted. Unfortunately, most of our current identification methods are not sensitive enough to identify their giftedness. Watch the videos below and then describe what a culturally responsive teacher can do to be more culturally sensitive with their identification procedures and to create programming that meets the needs of this special population.

One of the myths that we
need to debunk is that a student with a disability cannot also be gifted. I
understand the paradox as it seems odd to say that a child is gifted but also
has a cognitive processing issue. While on the surface this might seem
conflicting, there are a significant number of students in our population that
are both gifted and have a disability. Watch this video and then describe two
children that you might suspect are twice-exceptional.

Friday, December 6, 2013

After reading Ch. 9, you should be able to describe specific interventions to support gifted females. Summarize the most critical need for this population and describe three steps you will take in your school to meet this need.